Tony
I couldn't sleep. The "Apology Rush" had left a bad taste in my mouth that even a triple-shot espresso couldn't wash away. All afternoon, people had shuffled through the door, trying to buy their way back into our good graces with twenty-dollar bills and "we didn't know" excuses. I’d seen the truth in their shifting eyes: they weren't sorry for us; they were just relieved the FBI wasn't knocking on their doors for being complicit in a decade of silence.
I sat at the small kitchen table in the dark, my hands wrapped around a mug of coffee that had long since gone cold. I wasn't some mountain hermit waiting for the wind to change; I was a man who had spent years navigating the high-pressure line of city kitchens and the unpredictable, unforgiving asphalt of the interstate on my bike.
